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ePUB production just took a major leap upward with InDesign CC9.2

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The new book covering the book production improvements

The new InDesign CC9.2, released this week, gives us much to be happy about as book publishers

Most of the changes affect book production. The long-promised TypeKit integration is now available with over 700 Adobe TypeKit fonts freely usable and licensed for print, Web, and ebook as part of Creative Cloud. It runs much faster. There has been a major reworking of the hyperlinks panel to simplify its use. There’s a full featured QR code generator. There is now full Retina display support. Now, we can find the perfect font, fast. Type any portion of a font name, such as “bold,” “semicondensed,” or “italic,” or any part of a font family name, and see only the fonts that match your criteria.

iPad apps

Quoting from the Adobe site, “Create iPad apps without writing code. Access Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition (part of Creative Cloud) from within InDesign and use familiar tools to develop iPad apps. Creative Cloud members can submit unlimited single-edition iPad apps to the Apple App Store.” I haven’t tried this yet, but the time is quickly coming. Especially now that Adobe is licensing the .folio format for free.

Professional ePUBs can now be directly exported

There have been major upgrades to ePUB production. That, coupled with rapidly increasing support by distributors like iBooks and Kobo, makes it finally possible to directly export ePUBs without the need for any coding. There’s still a long ways to go for tables, but hopefully that should be coming soon.

Here’s a brief list of what’s now available:

  • Now ePUBs with embedded fonts now upload directly to iTunes Producer and Kobo Writing Life. They are also directly converted when uploaded within KDP.
  • Lists converted to text now match the indents of the rest of the text and include custom bullets
  • Anchored objects can float right or left using text wrap for margin control
  • Live type in your ePUB can now be colored with a gradient
  • An index with live links can be added
  • Tables of contents can be added anywhere they are needed: formatted with styles & live links
  • The Hyperlink panel has gotten much better, easier to use with far fewer bad links
  • ePUB3 now offers pop-up footnotes

The new ePUBs export quickly and upload flawlessly—even to Smashwords and the like (if they are small enough).

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Comments

ePUB production just took a major leap upward with InDesign CC9.2 — 9 Comments

  1. I fully agree. When digital publishing first became an issue, I had serious doubts that Adobe could turn a heavily frame-based application like InDesign into one that would world well with digital formats, which typically have only one text flow. Frames break documents into nearly independent blocks. Digital text flows are defined rigidly as this must follow that. I even suggested that Adobe create a separate ePub editor that was smart enough to share a document’s content with InDesign.

    But step-by-step, Adobe has shown that digital publishing with ID can not only be done but done well. With this latest 9.2 update, InDesign went from a merely good tool for creating ePub documents to an excellent one. The couple of dozen footnoted/endnoted titles of mine that needed iBooks’ pop-up notes can now have digital versions. And there’s a publisher I lay out books for that often has endnotes with hundreds of web links. I can now tell them that InDesign can check those links for validity. That’ll be a big timesaver. And wonder of wonders, it is snapper–or at least seems so with the 200-page book I’ve been working on. Feeling faster usually means at least a 30-40% improvement. I assume that means more of ID is now 64-bit.

    Even speedier is that book you’ve created for this just-out ID upgrade: Writing in InDesign Producing Books. That is fast and for a 474-page book quite reasonably priced at $22.46. Do you have any date for when the digital versions will be released? Also, are you planning to release a print version though Lightning Source? There are some who believe the bindings from LS are sturdier.

    Also, could you share some specifics about sending ePubs to Amazon and Smashwords, specifically:

    1. Will Amazon turn iBooks pop-up notes to something that pops up on Kindles?

    2. Will Smashwords now accept ePub 3.0? The last time I tried, it only accepted 2.0.

    My hope is that submitting ebooks as Word documents will fade away and that ePub will become the standard submission format even with Amazon. Having an ebook already in an ebook format should give authors and publishers more control over its final appearance.

    –Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Auburn, AL

  3. Dean Williams: “Now I will have to get cc. Thanks for the post.”

    Don’t forget that Adobe has a $20/month, single app plan. Applying that to ID is a real deal. In my case, after my one year’s discount runs out, I’ll have to decide if all those other apps and features, which I hardly use, are worth an added $30/month. Photoshop is the only one I use regularly, but I hate to give it up.

  5. About the pop-up footnotes, in my experience so far, Kindle is lagging behind. But then that may just be that I do not have a Fire HD with which to test. I can’t use Smashwords for most of my books because of the 7.5MB file size limit. I’m using Draft2Digital instead, plus I expect to use BookBaby’s new “free” option where the only cost is for the ISBN.

    The ebooks should be out. PDF at Lulu. Kindle is up. iBooks is in process as is Nook. Kobo accepted my embedded fonts version this time—for the first time. But, it’s still publishing as are the versions without fonts through D2D.

  6. A fully 64-bit ID is good news and certainly makes a big difference. Everything seems faster. I was amazed at how fast ID created the ePub for an over 500-page book. It only took about 10 seconds.

    I’ve complained about CC not giving us near-monthly tweaks thus far, but it’s smart of Adobe to get the core changes in place before they began to make other, less vital changes. I just hope they also get away from upgrading every app at the same time. User can learn changes better if upgrades to ID don’t come out at the same time as those to Photoshop and Illustrator.

    Wow! I just checked the iBookstore for your titles and you’ve got 43 of them. Impressive! Alas, your latest on ID isn’t there yet. I’ll wait for it to appear. Given Amazon’s outrageous download fees when no one else charges those fees at all, I’ve begun a policy of buying from Apple whenever possible so authors get more money. Also, Apple is more generous about interior image file sizes. That needs to be encouraged.

    Oh, and for what it’s worth, Amazon doesn’t seem to be linking the print and Kindle editions of Writing In InDesign CC Producing Books. The print edition page doesn’t mention the Kindle version. An advanced search for all types using the title only turned up the print version. Only when I forced their advanced search engine to look for ONLY a Kindle edition did the Kindle edition come up.

    It could just be a temporary glitch. It could be Amazon playing games with search results to tilt customers toward the more pricey version. Years ago I had an Amazon lawyer admit to me that Amazon sometimes does just that. When I lived in Seattle, an Amazon programmer told me, “Never trust Amazon’s search results.” About the only way you can be sure if Amazon has or doesn’t have a book is to search using the ISBN.

    Given Amazon’s tilt toward displaying pricey books in search results, I’ve event thought of raising the price of my Lightning Source hardback editions extremely high–say twice that of the paperbacks. They sell poorly anyway, so few customers would be hurt. But that’d probably make the books jump to the top of Amazon subject searches. I hate to game systems, but sometimes the system makes that necessary.

    Any chance you might give us a comparative review of Draft2Digital v. BookBaby v. Smashwords?

    –Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Auburn, AL

  7. HI Michael,

    Amazon claims they’ll have the print/Kindle pages combined shortly. They told me that on Saturday.

    About the iBooks availability, it always takes a while there. I use the ePUB with embedded fonts and open it directly in iBooks [in Mavericks and iOS]. The best way to get that [and to actually own the book] is to use the Gumroad page to buy it.

    https://gum.co/VMOX

    Thanks, I will do the D2D, BB, & SW review as soon as I get the money to use BookBaby’s new free option. D2D is my second best option for selling ebooks at this point. It sells more on Kobo than Kobo Writing Life, and more on iBooks than iTunes Connect. The problem is that neither D2D nor SW accepts ePUBs with embedded fonts. D2D can take ePUBs up to 20 MB. Sw is limited to 7.5 MB.

  8. Pingback:InDesign CC ePUBs now handle floating graphics fairly well » The Skilled Workman

  9. Pingback:Why does list quality matter in your ePUB? » The Skilled Workman

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